I HAD to do a double take this week when I read a headline declaring that child marriages are to be banned here, because I never realised we had that going on to begin with.

It turns out that this involves putting the legal age for nuptials up from 16 to 18 – so not quite the image I was conjuring of wee girls in their Communion dresses being married off to relics.

But now that I think of it, at 16 we are just that: children.

I vaguely recall knowing about this rule where you could get married at 16 with a parent’s permission but I can’t call forth one instance of somebody who actually availed of this loophole in my generation.

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I’m sure it was the done thing in my granny’s day, as I know a few older women who were married at 17, but I thought this was all in a time where people believed a woman to be a spinster if she wasn’t out of the house by 20.

Of all the wee women I’ve spoken to who stayed married since their teens, I would say most of them would have made excellent writers of crime novels, going by the many inventive ways they described they would like to get away with murder.

When I was in secondary school, a girl came in declaring that she and her boyfriend were engaged, at which our head of year promptly took her aside to ask if she was mentally well.

Upon closer investigation we found out that she just fancied having a nice ring and probably had no intention of marrying the spotty, Lynx Africa-wearing boy who proposed with a 2-carat glass ring from Argos.

I don’t actually know if it was one of those mood rings that was supposed to change colour depending on your temperament, but by the time the gold veneer had worn off, so too had her affection for him – and a green finger must mean you’re as green as the grass.

I’m well aware that there are couples who have been together since their teenage years and have gone on to have successful marriages but again, they tend to be of an older generation who either believed that divorce wasn’t an option, or those very lucky few who actually continued to enjoy each other’s company after 20 years.

I shiver to think that I might have wed the boy I was dating at 16.

He was a couple of years older than me and had left school believing he had nothing else to learn, because he was already an expert on many subjects he had never studied.

He actually did ask me to marry him and I giggled, thinking it was a joke, before he forced his granny’s ring onto my finger, which I promptly took off and gave back. 

I remember being excited and flattered that somebody would choose me but I knew that if I presented this idea to my Da, he would have been phoning around his mates to see if anyone failed to decommission so he could ask a favour.

I remember feeling rather sullen that my parents never took my first relationships as seriously as I did.

Then again, they were both divorced and all too wise to the folly of first love.

I think the Troubles have a lot to answer for when it comes to hasty marriages, as many people were living with a ‘live fast because you might get blown up’ war mentality.

I’ve heard stories of women marrying after a few months of courtship and walking out of the chapel smiling from ear to ear, only to be punched on their wedding night so that they ‘knew their place’.

Incidentally I’ve noticed that men on trial for femicide often have previous charges of non-fatal strangulation, which is particularly worrying.

Tales like this sadly don’t surprise me, given the many girls I know who’ve had a boyfriend grab them by the throat at some stage – myself included.

So instead of longing for an engagement ring I recommend buying yourself or your daughter a Claddagh.

Me and my girlfriends started a tradition of pooling together and gifting each other one on our birthday to symbolise the friendship, loyalty and love that is found in sorority.

It may not be a colour-changing mood ring, but it does act like one sometimes.

For instance, if feeling scared or intimidated by a man, it leaves a big red mark on his forehead.

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